When Harahan's interim police chief, Joe Lorenzo, took the position, he did it with the understanding that he would not run for the office. He didn't want to be an elected police chief. "You've got to have a pretty thick skin," Lorenzo said. "I'm not a politician."

By Lorenzo's own estimation, he does not have the thick skin that politics might require. He cares too much, about everyone. "I really did want to become a cop to help people," he said. "And who better to help?"

With rosy cheeks and photographs of his two daughters on his desk, Lorenzo, 52, seems more of a warm family man than a hardened veteran of police work. But Lorenzo worked almost 30 years in the New Orleans Police Department, at every role from Central City patrol officer to sex crimes detective to Public Integrity Bureau sergeant investigating colleagues accused of looting property or deserting the force after Hurricane Katrina.

Especially rewarding was the sex crimes assignment, where Lorenzo worked with victims through the entire legal process. "We didn't look at them as an item number," Lorenzo said. That attitude was recognized when in 1994, Lorenzo won the first award from the Louisiana Foundation Against Sexual Assault, for "exemplary service to survivors of sexual assault."

Still passionate about such work, Lorenzo serves on the board of the Metropolitan Center for Women and Children.

In 2012, when Lorenzo could have retired on his New Orleans pension, Harahan Chief Mac Dickinson tapped him for his experience in the Public Integrity Bureau and sex crimes units, Lorenzo said. In Harahan, he implemented a new case management system to track and follow up on crime reports, and he undertook a project to rewrite the Police Department's operations manual. He also served as the designated investigator for internal affairs issues.

Jimmy Keen, a Harahan resident who also is retired from NOPD, said he admired Lorenzo's work in New Orleans as well as his friend's character. "The first thing that I think about Joe is his character," said Keen. "You don't often meet someone like Joe who's a genuinely good person. He never has any agenda. Nothing bad to say about anyone."

As interim chief, Lorenzo has moved to install community policing initiatives that he said were effective in Central City. "We may be a small city, but we don't have to treat it that way," Lorenzo said. He said that in NOPD's 6th District, 90 percent of the work that he carried out as a patrol officer originated in a Crimestoppers Inc. tip.

But in Harahan, where lower wages lead to high turnover on the police force, residents do not have as strong a relationship with their local officer, Lorenzo said. "How can we better serve the city if we don't know what the problems are?" Lorenzo said.

He also has advocated for money for new patrol cars, eight of which have logged over 100,000 miles, he said.

Lorenzo said that when voters chose Dickinson's successor April 5, that person may choose to keep him on board or to cut him loose. "If he doesn't keep me, fine," Lorenzo said. "I can find a job."

In the meantime though, he'll try to do the most he can. "There's a lot of things I want to accomplish in the next four months. I don't know if I'm going to be able to do it."